separated at birth: BIG

VIA 57 West

New York City

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), architect

https://big.dk/

BIBFRAME Implementation Group (BIG)

photo above:

David.Clay.Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

stops along the way on my southern road trip

It may be mostly for my own memory aid, but I thought I would do a post with the overnight and other significant stops along my southern road trip loop from Alfred down to Orlando and then over to Biloxi before heading back North.

• Washington, D.C.: Sargent & Spain exhibition at the National Gallery (including chat with curator Sarah Cash and talking with NGA catalogers), This Present Moment at the Renwick, Giuseppe de Nittis at the Phillips, MASS Design Group at the National Building Museum, plus SAAM, NPG, Hirshhorn
• Richmond, Va.: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Branch Museum of Architecture and Design, Valentine Museum, VCU Institute of Contemporary Art (the building designed by Steven Holl, the museum was closed on New Year's Eve)
• Durham, N.C.: drop off some magazines for USModernist, shop for Sunday Times at The Streets at Southpoint (a new mall pretending to be a good old Main Street and doing a decent job of it)
• Florence, S.C.: Florence County Museum (art and history), visit Jeanette and Wanda
• Charleston, S.C.: Gibbes Museum of Art (including Bo Bartlett show on the top floor)
• Beaufort, S.C.
• Savannah, Ga.: Telfair Academy (with plaster casts of Laocoön and other classical works)
• St Augustine, Fla.: the old fortifications (17th century)
• Orlando, Fla.: visit Elizabeth G, Florida Polytechnic University (new building by Santiago Calatrava), Florida Southern College (buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright including a Usonian house), Orlando Museum of Art (exhibition Don't Ask Me Where I'm From and good selection of older and newer works from their American collections), Mennello  Museum of American Art (exhibition In Conversation: Will Wilson & Edward S. Curtis)
• Fanning Springs, Fla.: ARLIS/NA Cataloging Advisory Committee meeting via Zoom
• Apalachicola, Fla.: overnight spot, just love saying the word
• Lillian, Ala.: Johnny B's Front Porch for Taco Tuesdays
• Foley, Ala.: Book Exchange (the clerk very nicely helped me with the $100 bill that came out of the ATM without sufficient warning)
• Biloxi, Miss.: Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art (one of the major impetuses for this road trip and totally met expectations, museum designed by Frank Gehry)
• Meridian, Miss.: mostly overnight stop but now I wish I'd checked it out a little more
• Montgomery, Ala.: drove around Selma on my way to Montgomery (the tornado struck a few hours later), Lowndes County Interpretive Center of the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail between the two cities, National Memorial to Peace and Justice (designed by MASS Design Group), Legacy Museum, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald House Museum
• Tuskegee, Ala.: Tuskegee University with a chapel by Paul Rudolph and other buildings either by Rudolph or showing his strong influence (Fry and Welch, former Tuskegee architecture professors, collaborated on the chapel)
  

From Tuskegee, I started taking mostly interstate highways and was seriously headed toward home in Alfred, New York. I whizzed past Atlanta, Charlotte, Roanoke, Staunton, Harrisburg, and Corning. A couple days of driving most of the daylight hours. Not my favorite way to go from one place to another but when it's time to head home, the interstates do a pretty good (if jarring) job of it.

A couple miscellaneous observations: raptors love to fly over the interstates (must be the road kill), lightly traveled U.S. highways are generally in better shape than the heavily traveled interstates (well, duh).

My Flickr photostream has a picture album from the road. Here's a picture of the trailhead parking area where I attended the CAC meeting in Fanning Springs, Florida.

stormy weather

I was in Meridian, Mississippi, last night, on my southern road trip. The hotel was on a rise so, in the morning, I had a nice view of downtown. I probably would have preferred being downtown but El Norte Authentic Mexican Restaurant was a short (if not particularly pleasant) walk from the hotel. Today's goal was heading to Montgomery so I read a bit of Meridian history and took off for Alabama. I stopped at the Alabama Welcome Center and got the official state map, a brochure on Montgomery with map, and a brochure on the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail (National Park Service).

Map reading had indicated that U.S. 80 goes across Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma. The map seemed to have both a through-town and a bypass route for 80. Somehow I missed the through-town route and found myself on the eastern side of Selma. I carried on.

Midway between Selma and Montgomery is the Lowndes Interpretive Center which has various materials on the Trail as well as a shop and restrooms. As I was leaving, a local storm alert came across the wires to the various rangers at the site. What I heard is that the local tornado watch was for the next hour and would be lifted at 12:30. I got my book and tried to read but got restless after a while, especially after hearing that the state alerts would last until 5 pm. Another couple folks had decided to keep pressing on to Montgomery and a young woman headed out toward Selma. One of the other rangers suggested we were still pretty well ahead of the storm so I took off for Montgomery.

When I got to Montgomery, I was having trouble finding the National Memorial for Peace and Justice so I parked to check the map and online, just as it started to rain ... and hail and blow and lightning and a bit of thunder. Not much hail (or maybe it was twigs) but the rain was pelting. The car was shaking in the wind. When it seemed to let up a bit, I drove the few blocks to the memorial. When I got there, they had closed the memorial until the storm passed but the nearby Equal Justice Institute interpretive center was open.

I have now seen pictures of the tornado damage in Selma. A little too close for comfort. I think I had heard of the Selma tornado by the time they reopened the memorial. The still stormy sky and the wet ground added drama to the visit. The memorial is familiarly known as "the lynching museum." There are weathering steel (aka COR-TEN) blocks hanging from the ceiling of the open-air structure. The blocks have a county name and a list of the persons who were lynched in that county. Along the side walls are plaques that have short narratives on the cause of a person's lynching. I don't mean to sound too matter-of-fact about this description. The memorial is powerful and provoking, another of the compelling designs of MASS Design Group. There are also plaques describing truth and reconciliation measures by various jurisdictions.

Pictures from when they reopened the memorial after the storm had mostly passed and later as I left the memorial and the skies had cleared in the west.

Southern road trip dream

For years, ever since I heard about it, I have wanted to visit the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi. It finally came together when I got excited about seeing the "Sargent and Spain" show at the National Gallery of Art, curated by Sarah Cash, erstwhile colleague at the Amon Carter, and collaborators. I realized these were a couple push pins in the map of a road trip in the southern United States. As I started to formulate the trip and talk to friends about it, they'd squirm at the thought of traveling in the Deep South. What about homophobia? What about Trumpism? What about ...?

Now two weeks into the trip, I have been to a wonderful selection of museums, some for the first time ever, some for the first time in years, others oft visited. I started in Washington with the National Gallery where I got a chance to talk with Sarah for a half hour or so and several NGA Library colleagues and friends for about an hour. There was a wonderful craft show at the Renwick. The Obama portraits were back at the National Portrait Gallery after a tour. The National Building Museum had an overview show of the work of MASS Design Group whose National Memorial for Peace and Justice is still coming up (tomorrow) in Montgomery, Alabama. I got to the Smithsonian American Art Museum which is always a delight. The Giuseppe de Nittis show at the Phillips was really interesting and enlightening.

Amusingly, I got to valet park my own car at the hotel I was staying at (Normandy Hotel, near Connecticut Avenue and the Washington Hilton). The clerk on duty couldn't manage a stick shift. After not driving for several days, I couldn't either, as I tried to get out of the garage under the building with a steep driveway where you had to stop after tripping the device that opened the garage door. I only stalled twice.

I started this post to describe how much I was enjoying the Alabama and Mississippi portions of the road trip and, so far, have gotten distracted by the bigger narrative. More on all that later.

My first view of Alabama was the bright blue waters of Perdido Bay from the bridge/causeway between Florida and Alabama. I was about ready for lunch and there was The Front Porch. There's a bit of a name authority issue: the sign said Lillian's Front Porch, the menu said Johnny B's Front Porch. Lillian is the town. The sign out front said it was Taco Tuesdays. The tacos were fine, the setting was comfortable as you can see from this picture. The waitress was pleasant and teased me about doing my homework as I wrote in my journal.

I made it to Moss Point, Mississippi (about 25 miles from Biloxi) for my overnight hotel. Darkness was descending and there was a discussion group Zoom to get ready for. Next morning, I got off toward Biloxi with some compensation for the museum not opening until 10 am. That is, I dawdled over Artle and Wordle and went into Ocean Springs to check out the Walter Anderson Museum of Art which didn't open until 11 am and didn't call to me. It was foggy and lovely over the Gulf of Mexico as I drove along the beach highway.

And, then, there was the Ohr-O'Keefe. It was a few minutes before 10 am and I walked around to get a sense of the exterior. The museum was designed by Frank Gehry. It consists of several buildings and some of the buildings are pods. One of the pods is not finished inside and the museum is now using it as a display space with its raw guts showing. George Ohr called himself "The Mad Potter of Biloxi." His work is pretty rich and complex. There were plenty of his pots on display but not so many that you were ready to scream "Enough!"

My expectations of the museum were very high but the museum and collection (and even the lunch at the museum café) were fulfilling and deeply satisfying.

There are more pictures in my Flickr album:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/56294332@N00/albums/72177720304864649

Sonya Clark's truce flag

At last night's discussion group, the topic was Ukraine: when did the war begin? is "war" the term you'd use? why did it start? how much money has the U.S. spent in support of Ukraine in the last nine months? is that amount reasonable? organizations that funnel donations to the Ukrainian cause? to Ukrainians? would you send money? specific support for Ukrainian relief or to organizations that work in many situations, e.g., International Rescue Committee, Doctors Without Borders, American Friends Service Committee (or other service committees)? how has your opinion changed over the course of the year? can the U.N. or the international courts play a role in ending the Ukrainian conflict?

Most of the people in the discussion supported aid for Ukraine, including military aid. I mentioned in an email before the discussion (which was online rather than in-person) that I was torn by the whole thing. I'm an adamant pacifist but I couldn't explain what that meant in this context. I do believe strongly that war is generally (always?) a result of earlier war or conflict. How do you get to peace? Is it just utopian and totally unachievable? Quakers and Mennonites and others have been trying for centuries to achieve peace. Martin Luther King said that "true peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

I'm in Washington at the moment and visited the "This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World" at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum today. Lots of powerful work but one work that seemed to me to address my dilemma about explaining pacifism. The wall text near Monumental by Sonya Clark read "What if this flag of truce was the flag we knew, instead of the Confederate battle flag?"

The large textile work is based on the piece of cloth flown at Appomattox Court House in 1865 to indicate the surrender of the Confederate army. The cloth is in the collection of the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian. This large version was made by Sonya Clark in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia. It was shown in a 2019 exhibition at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. For more information on the project: https://americanart.si.edu/blog/sonya-clark-art

Conflicts and wars involve two or more parties. We need justice but, mostly, we just need to all be willing to say "no" to resolving our conflicts through violence. I am discouraged by the situation in Ukraine but I know that peace is impossible when military response is honored.

the books I read in 2022

The last book I read in 2021 was the enjoyable Some reasons for travelling to Italy by Peter Wilson. That title will not surprise you. The only surprising thing might be the "some" rather than "oodles of." As is usually the case, my reading this past year has been a mix of fiction and non-fiction. This is the list of titles, in chronological reading order, some annotations. Most of the editions I read are paperbacks; the dates here might be the hardcover date. 

• Mr Beethoven, by Paul Griffiths (2020)
• Memorial, by Bryan Washington (2020) - this was on a friend's list of books read and recommended this year; me too
• Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart (2020) - strong feeling of place (Scotland) and economics (poverty) and youth; also on another friend's list of books read
• A nest of vipers, by Andrea Camilleri (2013) - Camilleri's Montalbano mysteries are set in Sicily and very evocative of place; many have been made into TV movies
• Dark archives: a librarian's investigation into the science and history of books bound in human skin, by Megan Rosenbloom (2020) - sounds morbid but Rosenbloom uses a book to focus each chapter which may or may not involve a book that is actually bound in human skin; really enjoyed reading this book
• Queer city: gay London from the Romans to the present day, by Peter Ackroyd (2017)
• Breakfast with Buddha, by Roland Merullo (2007) - Dorothy recommended this one after I told her about having read his The delight of being ordinary; both are recommended by me, Breakfast takes place on a road trip to North Dakota
• On Juneteenth, by Annette Gordon-Reed (2021) - I had to read it for a variety of reasons, including its currency and Juneteenth is my birthday
• A visit to Don Otavio, by Sybille Bedford (first published in 1953, I read the NYRB edition, 2016, with introduction by Bruce Chatwin)
• The nickel boys, by Colson Whitehead (2019)
• How to hide an empire: a history of the greater United States, by Daniel Immerwahr (2019)
• Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell (2020)
• Out of Italy: two centuries of world domination and demise, by Fernand Braudel (first published in 1989, I read Europa Compass, 2019, translation)
• Logical family: a memoir, by Armistead Maupin (2017) - some good reflections on life events that played out in his fiction
• The glass facade, by John Watney (1963)
• The folded leaf, by William Maxwell (first published in 1945, I read the 1956 Vintage edition)
• Square haunting: five women, freedom and London between the wars, by Francesca Wade (2020) - H.D., Dorothy Sayers, Jane Harrison, Eileen Power, Virginia Woolf, on Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury
• Bath haus, by P.J. Vernon (2021)
• The smart enough city: putting technology in its place to reclaim our urban future, by Ben Green (2019)
• A saint from Texas, by Edmund White (2021)
• Broken glass: Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the fight over a modernist masterpiece, by Alex Beam (2020) - I toured the Edith Farnsworth House, outside Chicago, after the ARLIS/NA conference; the struggle to get the house built was monumental; it was wonderful to see the house, much illustrated and published, in its landscape along the Fox River
• Ninety-nine glimpses of Princess Margaret, by Craig Brown (2017) - maybe I liked it because I'm just a royal family fanboy or because I was kind of obsessed with The Crown; still, this was a good read of short chapters focusing on events with some association with Princess Margaret
• The mirror & the light, by Hilary Mantel (2020) - finally
• The sweetness of water, by Nathan Harris (2021)
• Four lost cities: a secret history of the urban age, by Annalee Newitz (2021) - Çatalhöyük, Pompeii, Angkor, Cahokia
• Correspondents, by Tim Murphy (2019) - the protagonist is an Irish-Arab American who becomes a journalist/correspondent in the Middle East during the late 1990s into the aughts; I enjoyed it very much, good place-ness, rather heartbreaking
• Lotharingia: a personal history of Europe's lost country, by Simon Winder (2019) - one of a trilogy about Central Europe

I'm not quite done with Lotharingia but it is such a wonderful read. Lotharingia started out as the portion of Europe given by Charlemagne to one of his grandsons.  The story has lots of Burgundy and Flanders stuff, places and art and architecture that I have long been interested in. Winder litters his history with geographic and cultural spices.

I didn't annotate all of the titles and I pretty much enjoyed all of this year's books. It took me quite a while to get through The mirror & the light but I had to read volume 3 of the Cromwell trilogy and I was deeply immersed in Tudor England as I read it. 

If you want to see how Goodreads sees my year's reading, go to https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2022/6837039. There, you can click on book jackets and see a description. Remember to support independent bookstores if you are going to buy the book. Both IndieBound and Bookshop.org can help you order a book by mail and support an independent bookstore in the process.

separated at birth: Mary Baker Pirelli

 

Pirelli Tower

Milan, Italy

Gio Ponti, with Pier Luigi Nervi and Arturo Danusso

1956-1958

Photo by jon_buono on flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonbuono/13996836142/

Christian Science Center

Boston, Massachusetts

tower on right: former Administration Building, 1972

Araldo Cossutta of I.M. Pei & Associates

By I, Luca Galuzzi, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2689070

separated at birth: goats and antiquities

The Ortlip Gallery at Houghton University currently has an exhibition of "Lithographs of the Holy Land and Egypt by David Roberts, Royal Academician." I know I recataloged a bunch of large portfolios, including like Roberts if not Roberts himself, when I was in the reclass section at Cornell between 1969 and 1971. Here's one of the lithographs that especially caught my eye in the exhibition.

"Goats at the entrance to the caves of Beni Hassan"

David Roberts, R.A. (1796-1864)

Part of the reason it really caught my eye is that we had seen sheep and goats at the ruins of Solunto. We heard their bells before we saw them. We were heading along the northern coast of Sicily, about to return our rental car and spend a last couple days in Palermo before heading to Rome and home.

We also have seen goats being used for grass and shrub control in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It's a fairly old park but not antique.

Christmas 1994 & the Cistercian Chapel by Gary Cunningham

Christmas 1994 found me alone (but not lonely) in Texas, where I was then living, in Fort Worth. I gave myself a local road trip for Christmas. The day started with Christmas morning mass at the Cistercian Abbey Church on the outskirts of Dallas, designed by Gary Cunningham and completed not long before. The low winter sun was bright on the facade of the church.

I went on to the Solana office park, designed by Legorreta Arquitectos. The campus was adorned with bright red decorative balls in reflecting pools and across the landscape.

Next stop was Decatur to add to my collection of county courthouses. There was recorded seasonal music playing around the courthouse square. This was Texas so the temperature was plenty warm for Christmas, compared to upstate New York.

It is nearing Christmas 2022, twenty-eight years later. Today's mail brought the November-December issue of Texas Architect, one of the magazines I index for the Avery Index. Imagine my delight to find that the Cistercian Chapel has won the 25-Year Award from the Texas Society of Architects. There are more professional pictures in the article, including one with a healthy layer of snow and three interior views.

Life and reading always chase their own tails. I am presently reading Lotharingia by Simon Winder. We are in the 15th century so it is lots of Burgundy and plenty of Cistercian stuff.

$200 billion dollars

One of the headlines in today's New York times: Worsening debt in poor nations threatens crisis. Looming default risk. Lenders are slow to help--World Bank warns of lost progress.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/business/developing-countries-debt-defaults.html

So what's the amount that the poor countries owe, by some calculations? As much as $200 billion dollars to wealthy nations.

An article on visualcapitalist.com has a table of the ten richest billionaires for each year of the last ten. Mostly men. The richest person in 2022 has something over $200 billion. The richest person in 2013 had a rather paltry $73 billion.

Yes, I know it's only money. The 2022 person is Elon Musk so that number may be different now than it was at the beginning of the year. In 2015, two Kochs or two Waltons, together, could have beat out #1, Bill Gates.